Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Three of the four top U.S.
congressional leaders skipped a state dinner tonight with
Chinese President Hu Jintao, highlighting tension between
Congress and the world’s second-largest economic power when
President Barack Obama is trying to strengthen ties.

House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
took a pass on the black-tie event at the White House. House
Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California, a critic of
China’s human-rights policy, attended the state dinner, the
first for a Chinese leader in more than 13 years.

All three no-shows, through their aides, cited scheduling
conflicts. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, and Reid, a Nevada
Democrat who has called the Chinese president “a dictator,”
are to meet Hu at the Capitol tomorrow.

“I look forward to the meeting,” Boehner told reporters
today.

If Hu or Obama had concerns about the leaders’ decisions to
stay away, neither would say. At a news conference, Hu deferred
a question on the matter to Obama, saying the president was “in
a better position to answer.” Obama never did.

Lawmakers in both political parties have been making
hostile statements and proposing tough economic measures against
China, including legislation to let the U.S. government impose
duties on the nation for undervaluing its currency.

Scoring With Voters

Political messages critical of China scored high with
voters during last year’s congressional campaign, said
Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who researched the issue while
advising candidates.

“There’s no question that the American public looks at
China as very much a serious competitor -- it’s not quite an
enemy, but it’s a competitor -- and Americans are very wary of
China these days,” he said.

Mellman, who has advised Reid, Senator Chuck Schumer of New
York and numerous House members, said virtually every candidate
he worked with last year touched on the issue in some way.

The dinner’s 225 guests included Chief Executive Officers
Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Jeffrey Immelt of
General Electric Co., along with former President Jimmy Carter,
former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, actor Jackie Chan and
singer Barbra Streisand.

Hu’s visit is focused on economic ties between the two
countries, including more than $400 billion in annual trade, as
well as differences over human rights, China’s enforcement of
intellectual-property rights and what U.S. officials say is the
artificially low value of the yuan.

Higher Import Duties

Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Republican
Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine told Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner in a letter this week that they will try to revive
House-passed legislation to let U.S. businesses seek higher
duties on some Chinese imports to offset any advantage from an
undervalued currency. The bill died in the Senate last year.

At the same time, lawmakers preparing to receive Hu at the
Capitol tomorrow are making it clear that the Chinese president
is no friend.

“He is a dictator,” Reid told a Las Vegas television
station yesterday. “He can do a lot of things through the form
of government they have. Maybe I shouldn’t have said ‘dictator,’
but they have a different type of government than we have, and
that is an understatement.”

Republicans and Democrats hammered at China during a
briefing by the House Foreign Affairs Committee today.

‘Monstrous Regime’

Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California, a
longtime critic of China’s human-rights record, called Hu an
“oppressor” and a “murderer,” questioning why Obama was
giving a respectful welcome to “a monstrous regime.”

Democratic Representative Albio Sires of New Jersey said
China was seeking “world domination.” New Jersey Republican
Representative Chris Smith suggested that Hu should be brought
before an international criminal tribunal instead of feted at
the White House.

The remarks were in contrast to the scene today at the
executive mansion, where Obama and first lady Michelle Obama
welcomed Hu with an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn.

Obama said the U.S. and China “have an enormous stake in
each other’s success.” Hu said, “Our cooperation as partners
should be based on mutual respect.”

Lawmakers’ slights of Hu may add to distrust between the
two nations, said Dan Mahaffee, an expert on China at the
Washington-based Center for the Study of the Presidency and
Congress.

‘Unfortunate Message’

“It sends an unfortunate message that at a time of
competition between the two countries, that American politicians
are busy looking inward,” Mahaffee said, adding that lawmakers
are playing to public fears.

A January survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for
the People and the Press found that 53 percent of Americans said
it was important for the U.S. to get tougher with China on trade
and economic issues. One in five, or 20 percent, said China
posed the greatest threat to the U.S. of any country, up from 11
percent in November 2009.

“Local pressure at the district translates up,” Mahaffee
said.

Dozens of congressional candidates aired television
advertisements last year seizing on the theme. In one, Reid
called his Tea Party-supported Republican opponent Sharron Angle
“a foreign worker’s best friend,” and said she backed tax
breaks for “outsourcing to China and India.”

“Only a politician who’s been in Washington 34 years would
vote to help foreign companies create Chinese jobs making
windmills,” said the advertisement, which featured pictures of
Mao Zedong, the communist revolutionary who ruled the People’s
Republic of China from its founding in 1949 to his death in
1976.

Reid and Boxer won re-election; Maynard lost.

The potency of China as a campaign theme was clear, said
Clayton Dube, who leads the University of Southern California’s
U.S.-China Institute in Los Angeles.

“Part of it is a genuine worry that the United States is
being victimized by an all-powerful Chinese government,” Dube
said. “The notion that things are not fair is a very powerful
one. It resonates with Americans all the time, particularly in
hard times.”